Power Ballad: Paul Rudd/Nick Jonas Song-Stealing Comedy is All Heart (and a Little Vinegar)

By Jim Slotek

Rating: B+

It says something about our times that a filmmaker known for light, heartwarming stories about plucky underdog musicians, love and the search for happiness would be considered something of a unicorn.

Irish director John Carney (Once, Sing Street) mixes a little vinegar in his latest, Power Ballad. Just a little, mind you. But enough to make you give a suspicious skunk eye to the next pop star you see.

Pop star in need of a hit (Nick Jonas) picks the brain of a journeyman rocker (Paul Rudd) in Power Ballad

The plucky hero in this latest is Rick Power (Paul Rudd), a lifetime rocker with dreams of playing Madison Square Garden. He had a handshake record deal once. But he fell in love with an Irish lass (Marcella Plunkett), and now supports her and their eye-rolling-but-loving tween daughter Aja (Beth Fallon) as the front-man of a busy wedding band, The Bride & Groove.

The band can cover anything, and fill any dancefloor, until Rick gets his nightly moment to sing one of his own songs, and the dancefloor empties as if someone had pulled the fire alarm.

So it is that he is a star without a spotlight – until the night that one of the rich groom’s best friends turns out to be Danny Wilson (Nick Jonas), an ex-boy-band heartthrob looking for a hit that asserts his freedom from that boy band baggage.

Once the liquor hits, Danny is convinced to join Rick onstage, someone posts it, and the “faded-superstar reduced to singing at weddings” meme makes them both go viral.

While the Interwebs turn, Danny and Rick spend a drunken and stoned evening in Danny’s suite, playing tunes, exchanging life philosophies, and eventually sharing and co-creating songs. Not a smart move on Rick’s part as it turns out. This is a deceptively sweet episode that makes ensuing events something of a tart palate cleanser.

Chalking it all up to a one-off magical night with a nice young dude who happens to be famous, Rick thinks nothing of it – until one of the songs in his mental vault hits the charts, fully produced, with Danny’s name on it. It quickly becomes one of the most played songs on the planet, making every day another occasion for the universe to laugh at his lack of success. Rick could have been somebody after all if he hadn’t married and had a kid..

That this would existentially torture someone is not exactly a revelation. But it’s a perfect turn for Rudd, who oozes good intentions and good-natured bro-hood in everything he does (who else could have starred in a movie called I Love You, Man?). But even saints have a breaking point, and that’s the task at hand for Rudd in Power Ballad, playing with the possibility that, awash in existential bitterness, he could lose his family, friends and everything else he’d loved and had taken for granted.

Maybe the hardest part for an audience to swallow is that there is no digital proof of Rick having written the song a dozen years earlier. He has hard-drives full of demos, but this one is nowhere to be heard.

So, he is pretty much an unarmed man when he takes it upon himself to head to decadent L.A. with his oddball party-animal guitarist buddy Sandy (Peter McDonald, who also co-wrote) and see justice done. How it happens (or doesn’t, more or less) involves madcap coincidences, quick thinking and literally being fast on one’s feet as an uninvited guest at a VIP party.

Meanwhile, as much as this is Rudd’s movie, Carney doesn’t allow Danny to come off as a simple song-thief, totally lacking in principles. He is more desperate than evil. In the scene where he “writes” the song for his briefly current girlfriend, Jonas already has a look on his face like he’s a first-time shoplifter. There are scenes where he sheepishly asks his greedily blunt manager Mac (Jack Reynor) if they can’t just give the guy from Ireland a little money to make him go away.

Part fight-manager and part devil-on-his-shoulder, Mac has a no-retreat/no-surrender policy for people trying to grab a piece of “his” money, and shuts down Danny’s conscience every time it announces itself.

Still, we know the whole thing is preying on Danny’s mind. We expect him to do the right thing. And so, we wait for him to reclaim his soul…and wait… and wait.

If you expect the best from everyone involved, prepare for disappointment. But without giving anything away, it’s fair to say Power Ballad is a mix of feel-good, then feel-bad, then mostly feel good again.

That’s a recipe for a pretty good popcorn movie, even if you can’t dance to it.

Power Ballad. Written by John Carney and Peter McDonald. Directed by John Carney. Stars Paul Rudd, Nick Jonas and Peter McDonald. Opens in theatres Friday, June 5.